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The typology of the Victorian novel
Victorian Age Queen Victoria ’s reign 1827 –1900 = the time of a very expansive social and political development. In the 18th century Paris was the center of civilization. In 19th cent. London becomes the most important city of western world. England becomes the workshop of world. Period of prosperity, the British became the richest nation. Through its expansion it also becomes the most powerful empire. The middle classes benefited from this expansion. Success in self-confidence, stability, security. Now evokes image of respectability, creditability, religiosity, prudishness, serried family with patriarchal roots, unblemished tradesman. By this picture the townsman’s classes hoodwinked the world and the future. When we look into Mayhew ’s writing London Labour and the London Poor (Londýnští dělníci a londýnská chudina) about chaotic and morally perverse world, the picture of respectable Victorians falls apart very quickly. The life of the higher classes haven’t changed, Victorianism was “invention” of middle classes. An expression of their new self-confidence. It has deep roots in the 18th century, at beginning of 19th century. Writers such as Swift , Fielding began to seem too open for people. Shakespeare’s editions were censored. Published without any sexual hints. In the 1840s strict rules were fixed what an author can say in order not to loose “family” readers. Families used to read novels together and aloud as a kind of service. Family readers were the main part of readership = source of living for the writer. Reading aloud, and the fact that the novels were published in monthlies or weeklies as a series, made the relationship between the novelist and his reader close. It gives liveliness to Victorian prose. Britain was changing from country – civilization to a town – civilization, which brought problems but new opportunities too. The railway enabled people to look at other parts of country. It caused geographical and social move. The idea of free market became a new religion. The religion crisis became the subject of public discussion in 1867 when Darwin’s work was published. Intellectuals could see the conflicts but the early-Victorian novels show rather the self-confidence of a man of a street rather than fear. The transition from lively optimism to disgust and despair can be clearly seen in the work of first, popular Victorian novelist Dickens . The Victorians were progressive in belief in science. Very conservative and even repressive in their attitude to worldly pleasures. The Mid-Victorians are concerned hypocritical, complacent, smug, prudish. Victorian prudishness found its expression in an expurgated version of Bible, Shakespeare for family reading. Sexual repression went so far that in some homes even furniture legs had to be covered by long heavy linen. “respectability” = there were strict rules what gentleman and lady should do to be respectable. The compromise and conformity between public concerns and private urges, always to repress private urges. Public image was always emphasized. * Victorian ideal, ethos = to give up private desire for a public good image The key word “duty” – devotion to duty is connected with Puritanism. During Victorian age there were religious tendencies to strengthen puritanical code of morality in order to give up pleasure of private. * a very severe –Sunday Observance Bill. How to behave on Sundays was introduced in 1837 by Parliament. According to it public entertainment was banned on Sunday. Sunday was for church and Bible reading. *Queen Victoria left the rule of the country to a Prime Minister: Gladstone, Disraeli – a conservative. The greatest spokesman for English imperialism. The idea was the supposedly superiored Anglo-Saxon civilization. * Respect of the otherness, other people’s differences. Science made progress quickly, new ideas caused intellectual controversy among Victorians. Discovery of geology and biology had wide region implication. Geology found that Earth is much older than the Bible says. Realism and Naturalism in the English Novel Realism ''' * an attempt to describe behavior, objects, and surrounding exactly as they appear in life. It was a reaction to the highly subjective approach of romanticism. It is concerned directly with what is absorbed by the senses. * Writers must not select facts in accord with preconceived esthetic or ethical ideals. They must set down their observations impartially and objectively. Realists tended to downplay plot in favor of character and to concentrate on middle-class life. They avoided larger, more dramatic issues. * Realistic literature was produced approximately between 1840 - 1890 * The Romantics were engaged mostly in lyrical poetry. Historical or mythological epics, or lyrical dramas. * The Realists preferred the novel. It became the most popular and influential literary form. * They wanted to give a broad description of the society. '''Naturalism * The difference between realism and naturalism is harder to define. The two terms are often used interchangeably. It adds an amoral attitude to the objective presentation of life. It attempts to apply scientific theories to art. Authors regard human behavior as controlled by instinct, emotion, or social and economic conditions. They reject free will, adopting instead biological or economic determinism (Darwin and Marx) * It followed Realism approximately in 1890. Victorian intellectuals Mathew Arnold , 1822-1888 poet, prose writer * expresses these doubts in his literary and expository writing. Sensitive Victorians suffered from an anxious sense of something lost, a sense of being displaced in the world. Sense of being mad alien by technologic changes, which were too quick for people to adopt them. Thomas Carlyle , 1795-1881 * found the Victorian progress was too materialistic. Fast technological and economical progress was done at the expense of the spiritual dimension of human life. The material progress was achieved at a terrible price – the price of spiritual emptiness. * He developed some of the romantic ideas > imagination, vitality – the values which Victorianism turned its back to. * He inspired almost all great Victorian writers. Inspired another one great Victorian thinker: John Ruskin , 1819-1900 * tried to teach his contemporaries to appreciate the human and the spiritual value of art, persuade them to make human society more humane, believed that industry without art is brutality. The main literal genre of Victorianism: a novel reading a novel seems to be an addiction for most Victorians Victorian novelists: * The way in which they were published, in serial form in magazines, and single chapters appeared monthly. They have to be careful about 2 things: 1. to culminate the events, 2. to stimulate interest in the novel as a whole most important writers: Charles Dickens (Ch. Kingsley) Bronte sisters William Thackeray George Eliot Thomas Hardy Henry James late-Victorian Charles Dickens , 1812-1870 * As a child he had to work in a factory. It caused him traumatic experience because he was a middle class child. He felt emotionally abandoned by his family, mother >> was emotionally deprived * His novels are about: orphans, abandoned child, at the end a child is saved by a rich philantrop, a child is saved suddenly. * He introduced a big city to the novel (London), a big city = microcosms of the world. Very ambiguous. Always a wilderness of humane alien nation. Loneliness in a crowd. People are ignorant of the activity going round them. Often replaces understanding by speculations and mystery. Narrator finds the big city fascinating but also disturbing. * Combines fact and fantasy, Dostojevskij was a better psychologist. * Children – they stay naive through every book, it’s called deconsciousness of the age * His major topics – main social problems of the times, poor houses, delay in justice – whole generation suffers. The social environment – abuse, realistic, he combined masterly storytelling and humor with social criticism. * In his construction of plots and characters he is romantic. * Plots are based on coincidences. * Characters are manipulated by the plot, characters are black and white, good characters are too good >> boring, unbelievable, evil characters are almost monsters, sometimes switches too quickly from sentimentality to humor and satire. * Two types of good characters: very good, humorous. Novels: The Pickwick Papers – comic, humorous, optimistic, picaresque * It influenced the publishing industry in Great Britain (form of cheap monthly installments) * Samuel Pickwick was the general chairman of the Pickwick club he had founded. An idealist, Sam Weller is his servant. He has a genuine common sense and wit. * The club served to link a series of detached incidents and characters. * In his novels, he created authentic characters and set them in intricate plots. He accuses aristocracy and the middle class of acting heartlessly towards the common people. He feels sympathy and understanding for the weak and poor. Often represented by innocent children. Social conflicts and bitter injustices are mostly harmonized by the traditional happy-ending. =Oliver Twist ,= =David Copperfield= =Hard Times ,= =Little Dorrit= =Great Expectations ,= =Bleak House= from the beginning to the end he gets bleaker and bleaker. His novels are very episodic. The last novels are much better structured. Not episodic any more. Bleak House experiments with narration. * uses 3rd person narration = main stream novel * Categories of traditional novels: action, narration, characters – according to this. Wuthering Heights is very innovative. * Artistically best is Bleak House. * Tendency toward grotesque almost reaches the absurd in the last novels, therefore he’s considered a predecessor of Kafka. The Old Curiosity Shop , Martin Chuzzlewit A Tale of Two Cities , A Christmas Carol in Prose William Makepeace Thackeray , 1811-1863 * Most severe critic of the English leisure classes. A picture of society is not as wide as in Dickens. Thackeray focuses on higher classes only. * Born in India, he tried to develop his literary and artistic abilities as an editor of a journal and art student in Paris. * He came from a well-off family from Calcutta. Father a wealthy official of Empire. At 6 sent to a boarding school in England. Unhappy there, disappointed with education system. Left Cambridge, went to Paris to study art. * A correspondent for English satirical magazines. Good cartoonist. The Snobs of England – series of sketches a panorama of English social and political life. Stories focus on whole gallery of snobs – banking snobs, political, literary, club, university snobs, modern meaning of “snob” – he gave it a new meaning. * Innovator in terms of plot in comparison with Dickens. Creates a complex unified plot which develops according to decision of individual characters. Vanity Fair * Masterpiece, a fair is a symbol for world, where you can find anything. Structure of novel follow the life of 2 women: Becky Sharp and Amelia Sadley, plot quite symmetrical. At beginning Sharp is very poor and Sadley very rich, during the novel it changes. Sharp thanks to her scheming and manipulation gets higher. An ambiguous character – immoral but very vivacious and attractive. The reader almost identifies with her. Amelia is good but boring, they both receive the same education. Becky becomes a governess of Sir Pitt Crawley. When his wife dies, Crawley wants to marry her. She is already married to his son Rawdon. Amelia’s father goes bankrupt and her engagement with the vain rich George is broken off. George’s friend Dobbin persuades him to marry her anyway, and George is disinherited. George, Rawdon and Dobbin are all in the army an the wives accompany them to Belgium. Becky carries on an intrigue with George, who is killed at Waterloo. Amelia with her son George go to live in poverty with her parents. She has to leave him there. Becky and Rawdon make a brilliant display in London. Dobbin has been in India for 10 years. Becky and Rawdon part, since she was unfaithful. She leads a disreputable life. Rawdon dies. Amelia does not want to marry Dobbin, but then Becky tells her about George’s infidelity. Disillusioned, Amelia marries Dobbin, but by then his love has lost much of its intensity. * In Thackeray’s world only position in society is what matters. There’s no nature, only society. Becky is a picira woman – not identified with particular class. A kind of outcast. Does everything to get higher. Modern Moll Flanders, she has to be very sophisticated. How can she do it? Because she is half French, that’s Thackeray’s explanation. Her mother was a French artist >> Becky is a picira * Is there a moral character in the book? – Dobbin, a secret admirer of Amelia, tries to put things right, but we can appreciate him. * Narration: very detached narrator, great difference from Dickens, we don’t know on which side Thackary’s identification is. Characters are “puppets” for him. * Its basis formed by his antipathy towards snobbery, hypocrisy, and English social system. The Books of Snobs , The History of Henry Esmond , The Virginians Brontë sisters * From Haworth , connected with the Yorkshire moors. Lived very isolated lives, but it was normal for a abourgeous family like theirs. Their father talked with them about actual political issues. They were well informed. The moors were wide source of pleasure and fantasy. Were sent to a boarding school where they suffered a lot. They had a short stay in Brussels, but Emily, '1818-1848 couldn’t stand being away from moors. They had a talented brother. But he drank himself to death. Charlote Bronte 1819-1855 =Jane Eyre(Novel) , 1947= * Charlote's novels are formally untraditional. That’s why they are criticized often. * A new thinker for the development of the English novel, an orphan suffers from hard conditions in boarding schools. Is always in revolt against circumstances. She is a passionate being. She rejects her 1st man, because she feels she wouldn’t live a passionate life with him. When she meets Mr. Rochester for the 1st time = a gothic element, she knows she could be his wife. She is complicated, self-torturing, independent and revolting girl. She is tortured between two poles of her personality: 1. passion, excitement and need for gratification, x 2. image of suffering, self-denial and spiritual fight. She learns both poles of her personality and learns that what her era requested from a woman she can never fulfill. She revolts against all hypocrisy of Victorian ideal of woman. * A revolutionary book , sometimes compared to revolting spirit of 1848, her open expressions about woman’s sexuality and women’s rights make her book a real turn point not only in literal terms. * Her passion is in conflict with her moral sense. She gives up her passion. Woman’s passion can be equal to man’s passion. It was believed that only men were passionate. She is fighting for emotional equality. Many dramatic turns, in the end gratification of their passionate natures. - heroines of Jane Austen: took for granted the women’s position in a man-made world. They fitted there x Jane Eyre: in revolt, a state of reverse. There aren’t many alternatives opened up in front of her. The only social position available for her is a governess or a teacher. Anne ', 1820-1849, wrote 2 novels Agnes Grey(novel) * Anne never had the literary talent of her sisters. Emily Bronte * The fifth child, was later prone to creating motherless characters. Her mother died when she was only three. * She was able to stay in the boarding school only three months. Her nerves became too frazzled and she had to go home. She simply couldn’t stand not being able to write and think about Gondal as much as she wanted to. * Found a teaching job. Her health broke under the stress and she returned home in 1839. She never again attempted to find any kind of a job. Charlotte dragged her to a school in Brussels. Teachers were impressed with her clear, smooth writing style but she made no friends. As was typical for her, she went back home as soon as possible. * She had been writing poetry all this time, mostly on Gondal. Charlotte found these poems and read them. She urged her to publish the works. Emily agreed to the publication of Poems under the pseudonyms Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell * She finished Wuthering Heights in 1846. Its style is pure Gondal. It was universally condemned as being far too shocking for anyone to read. It kept most people thinking of the authors of these books as men, believing that no woman could write such things. Even when rumors that they were women started circulating. * She refused to take any of the family’s advice about her health. On 19 December 1848, she finally collapsed, saying “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now.” * Charlotte called her “a baby god”, there is a chance that Charlotte did in fact destroy an uncompleted second novel of Emily’s perhaps feeling that the subject of the novel might do harm to Emily’s reputation. * Though she had a hard time relating to her pupils, one student recalled her telling her class that the school’s dog were dearer to her than any of them were. =Wuthering Heights , 1847= imagery * Title – concrete place x in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice * Imagery: Nelly says: “He is cuckoo” – the other, different, “fiend” – something beyond conventional understanding of god and devil (like Byronic characters), Heathcliff modeled on Byronic characters. * The images of the dogs, keys and fire, they all inter-relate in the book. * Proximity of violence and love. Cathy is more violent to Nelly and than she is with Linton. Her dream about heaven – world of Linton’s boring for her. story * The new industrial dislocation. The birth of an outcast class, dark, unprecedented and exposed, a kind of naturalist extension. The contrast between the Heights and the Grange is a conscious contrast between two kinds of life. * When the story is taken out of the novel. All we have left is a romantic melodrama. But it is very far from being that, the novel is poetic. The form of the novel is determined as much by its imagery. style * It is utterly unlike any other novel. No novel is more imbued with the spirit of place. Bronte makes use of no such set descriptive passages as we find variously in Scott, Dickens, Eliot, Hardy or Lawrence * Innovating – through a dream Bronte says, dream is from your unconscious, it expresses criticism of her rational decision to marry Linton. * The love story is the catalyst for other events * Fatalistic tone, incredible cruelty * The content is strange enough, while the artistic expression of it is flawless. * It is a whole that cannot be separated into parts. The author is not there at all. Bronte is mystic, but the novel is not the record of a mystical experience. * Two opposing principles are shown which seek to devour each other, yet ultimately compose a harmony. They are symbolized in the novel in the two houses and their occupants. The principle of energy and storm on the one hand and the principle of calm, of settled assurance on the other. space * world – wold nature, loneliness, mystery. Ghost, elements of gothic novels. People don’t care what they look like. Long passages of description on ill heath, tumult. This can be found in Kubla Khan as well. Often romantic world, 7 codes of behavior, * Comparison of Wuthering Heights and Trushcross Grange. It’s more civilized, to corroborate – in valley, in park garden, lodge used to be. Luxurious, inside more comfortable, well stocked library, people reserved, behave in a way that is respectable – conventional manners. * Wuthering: storm, tumult, exposure, power, no distinction is made between man and nature, there are forces indoors at the Heights - inanimate objects with a sinister presence and threat. The roof, never underdrawn, generates the terrible image of a dissected body. This is the first of many images of cruelty - the hanging of dogs and cats. * Thrushcross Grange with its bright windows, library, civilization and luxury. * Rocks represent something firm, stable. For Victorian age, duty is a key word, to suppress personal desire. She represents the different vies. She represents Catherine’s superego. Nelly represents conventionality. If you marry him, you should obey him. Catherine is beyond her comprehension. In the meantime he leaves, storm outside and in her heart. There is a parallel, her life with Linton is peaceful, tranquil, tranquility – Heathcliff wasn’t there, Linton did everything she wanted, when Heathcliff returns again the sexual connotations emerge. She behaved as if she was crazy. Nelly didn’t recognize Heathcliff, he became higher class. His accent has changed. He is cultivated, nobody knows him = romantic character. He may have joined the army (wide shoulders) Cathy & Heathcliff * Catherine’s character is similar to Heathcliff, it is more emphasized as she lives beside him. They love rambling in the moors. It’s from romantic books. Love of the wilderness outside, being alone. * At Trushcross Grange she gets known conventional world. Is respected, is admired, is attracted to it. It causes a conflict in her intrinsically = deep in her, she is in conflicted between those two worlds. * Catherine and Heathcliff are not vague romantic dreamers. They rebell against degradation. In their revolt they discover deep and passionate need of each other. The outcast slummy, turns to the lively, spirited, fear-less girl who alone offers him human understanding. And she, born into the world of Wuthering Heights. And she senses that to achieve a full humanity, to be true to herself, she must associate herself totally with him in his rebellion against the tyranny of the Earnshaws. * Heathcliff is active and intelligent, we know he is on the side of humanity. He is a conscious rebel. * Yet Catherine betrays him and marries Edgar Linton, kidding herself that she can keep them both, and then discovering that in denying Heathcliff she has chose death. Thrushcross Grange seduced her. She begins to despise Heathcliff’s lack of “culture”. He is dirty, whereas Edgar, besides being handsome, “will be rich and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband”. * Heathcliff returns, adult and prosperous, and at once the social conflict is re-emphasized. * Catherine says: I am him. – eternal love, one soul – Shelly “one soul in two frames = two people but one soul, altraromantic concept of love. * The romance between Cathy and Heathcliff. They are soulmates. She is his all-consuming passion. This still doesn’t stop her from being fickle and easily swayed: after all, she marries Edgar when she knows she is in love with Heathcliff. This makes the love story frustrating for the reader. The reader knows that it was the mistake. Bronte’s characters are so well-constructed that the reader feels that it really mattered what happened to them. Cathy shows herself to be shallow and thoroughly unlikable. It makes the reader care more about Heathcliff * Cathy and Heathcliff - that kind of bond, that sense of absolute presence, absolute existence in another. * Cathy marries Linton for what Heathcliff does not have: money, position, ease - the visible elements of society. She thinks she can retain a double identity: the indestructible identity, the profound and the necessary, but also the contingent identity, the temporary, the superficial and the pleasing. she takes Heathcliff for granted and she marries Linton, and the real dislocation inevitably follows. It can be only in another generation, and then through time restored. narration * There is the complex narrative technique, which gives us a triple perspective on the action. Lockwood completely misinterprets everything through his civilized, cultured and rational response. He simply makes a fool of himself when he tries to apply values appropriate to the world of Jane Austen to Emily Bronte’s. Lockwood asserts his fellow feeling for Heathcliff: a sympathetic chord within - he exposes himself as incapable of any real feelings or any understanding of them in others. He went to Wuthering Heights again because there was no fire in his study and at Wuthering Heights there is always fire blazing. * On his second visit: a woman was concerned with being angel of the house, but it’s mistake here. His first mistake is talking about weather, 2nd mistake about the animals. They are old family. He thinks they should be respectable, honorable, we know nothing about Heathcliff. In a realistic novel we would know everything. * The whole book is spoken by Lockwood, but quickly Bronte established her own convention of flashback - Ellen Dean. Her values are much more realistic, but her common sence proves inadequate. Then her voice fades, and the voices of the protagonists themselves burst through without interpreter. * The reader is warned by the folly of Lockwood and Nelly to make no easy assumptions or judgement. He must struggle to piece together the past and use it to cast light on the present. characters * It is one of the paradoxes of Emily Bronte’s vision that Heathcliff is a monstrous character, hell-bent on revenge against Hindley for degrading him to the status of a servant. From his return to Wuthering Heights onwards, his actions become more and more depraved. Given that the circumstances surrounding Hindley’s death are somewhat murky, it’s perhaps little surprise that the academic John Sutherland has speculated whether Heathcliff really is a murderer. But even if he isn’t, what is quite beyond doubt is Heathcliff’s hunger for revenge. He lowers Hindley’s son Hareton to the level of servant. He manipulates everyone around him, even kidnapping and forcing a marriage between his son and Cathy’s daughter in order to gain control of the lodge. His most abysmal act, however, is to dig up Cathy’s corpse and sleeping with it. These are the actions of a man in a state of dangerous obsession. Not those of an innocent victim of love. * The characters cannot be questioned, but their reality is of a different kind. * At the end of the novel, just when it seems that it’s impossible ever to identify with Heathcliff again, Bronte does a very clever thing. When Heathcliff has gained control of the Lodge through his machinations and is finally able to tear it down as planned, he gives up, so weary and tired of manipulation that he allows himself to die. The effect was simple: the reader starts to feel great sympathy for him once more. While he has everything that he has schemed for and even though has gained revenge on all those who have wronged him, he cannot regain Cathy, which is obviously what he really wants. At his death, when his ghost is seen with Cathy’s, it is even possible to feel happy for him. * Bronte decided to redeem Heathcliff in the end. While he has not made up for everything that he has done, it seems as though he has returned to being human again. Rather than staying as the monster he had become. It is nice that the novel has a reasonably happy ending, but at the same time, I felt there was no imperative for Bronte to do this – the novel itself is hardly a happy affair. Heathcliff was greatly wronged by Hindley, but once he gained power again, it seems perverse to pursue vengeance to such an extent. Once Cathy died it would seem that there is no reason to attack Edgar and his daughter – yet Heathcliff continues, his passionate nature perhaps contributes to his obsession. It’s clear that he must do things whole-heartedly or not at all. Perhaps this would explain why he is so driven to such destructive and vengeful ends. * Not sure if the author is sympathetic towards Heathcliff, although he was mistreated as a child. Also ultimately frustrated by the relationship with Cathy, the elaborate revenge fantasy was a bit unjustified and malevolent. She ends the book with a tone of optimism regarding the heirs-apparent to the Heathcliff-Cathy relationship. * Heathcliff was an abused child who in turn became the abuser. However, the author conveys that the abused child, Hareton, can overcome his abuser, and grow up to be psychologically sound an a moral person. George Eliot , 1819-1880 * Her novels are different from the novels of other Victorians in the sense she introduces ideas and philosophy into her novels. She brought a wider awareness of European developments to a novel. She started writing fiction when she was 37. Before that worked as a translator, translated philosophical works from German to English, as an editor in Westminster review. * Dickens and Thackeray were only intelligent observers of the life around them, Eliot is an intellectual * She brought philosophy into English novels, proposed philosophy of positivism (started in France – Comte), x Brontes – their world is a poetically highted world, partly a romantic world. * Eliot’s philosophy is religion of humanity. She believed religious impulses should be channeled into relationships between people not into something transcendental. She is placing responsibility on the individual himself, on his moral choices, that is the individual choice of actions that shapes one’s life. * plot is something external. You yourself make your decisions. It’s your own plot, character itself becomes a plot but there are also the circumstances in life, they come to a conflict. * She doesn’t believe in transcendental things. Humans are punished or rewarded in this world already. They are rewarded by their inner well being or punished by inner misery. When they are punished, they lose property. * Choice – is very important, precedes 20th century existentialism. novels: Mill on the Floss , 1860 Silas Marner – a very rich man, is obsessed by his gold and doesn’t communicate with the people in the village. He forgets to lock his door and the gold is stolen instead a little baby is sitting on the floor with golden hair. It brings him inner happiness, and a relationship with people from the village. * It’s almost a parable with her philosophy Middlemarch – the most important Victorian novel in sense that Victorian ideas are discussed and tested in the novel. * Dorothea Brook x Dr. Lydgate, she is a young woman, very high moral statute. Rejects the man who wants to marry her. She wants a man whom she can take advantage of. She married an imposter, her sacrifice is useless. He – a young doctor, wants to make great changes in the world of medicine. He is cheated by his own inner weakness. He falls a prey to a beautiful woman. She is very superficial, very materialistic, he is frustrated. * Her best book, long, follows lives of many people in a small English town. It takes place before the big reform bill in 1832. It focuses on 2 main characters. They both demonstrate social changes in the 19th century. At the end they lose to the conservative society thanks to their own insignificance. They are both kind of “prophessors” but their time hasn’t come yet Samuel Butler Erewhon , Erewhon Revisited * Satirical stories of an imaginary land (Utopian Romances) * They criticized the customs and manners of contemporary England The Way of All Flesh * A brilliant satirical autobiographical study of mid-Victorian family life. It describes the family’s tyranny, hypocrisy and mental cruelty. He wanted to reveal the relationship between parents and children. Thomas Hardy , 1840-1928 * Late Victorian, born in a low–status family. He doesn’t follow realism of George Eliot . He follows W. Scott in the sense of importance of nature environment in his novels. He uses coincidences – tradition of 18th century, but he lacks optimism and belief in opportunities. * All his novels take place in “Wessex” – south-east England. This place – has an important role in his novels. They are structured according to periods of the character’s lives and according to place they are in. * He doesn’t show nature sentimentally but doesn’t close his eyes in front of cruelty of world. * The main novelist and poet of the naturalist movement. He portrayed his native Dorset. * He powerfully drew characters struggling helplessly against their passions and external circumstances. They are governed by a malign fate. Their instincts and inherited vices they cannot fight. * He had a deep understanding of poor country people. He criticized the aristocracy and middle class, he concentrates mostly on the inner personal life. =Jude the Obscure ,''1895= * His only novel that takes place in town. Traditional omniscient narrator. Chronological, straight naturalistic features. Victorian novels are usually about relationship between individual and society (Dickens, Thackery, G. Eliot). Here it’s a shift to natural world, but in Hardy natural world – analogy between man and birds. His worldview is very pessimistic, a part of his naturalism. * His pessimism anticipates existentialism of the 20th century. * Arabella is described as a part of animal world. That’s the reason why the book was banned. Their first meeting – described, sexuality x will. Aspirations, the sexual power goes against his will. Hardy isn’t in favor of Arabebella’s sexuality. According to Shopenhauer he believed sexuality was a force that went against your aspiration, will. A woman is in power, knows how to work with her sexuality. He’s the victim, she’s using all tricks she was given. * Class – in Victorian novels there are only middle classes. The poor are completely out of their concern. In Hardy – Jude is very poor, working class but intellectual. It’s a completely new feature. * Family – absence of parents. Alienation of a man in the 20th century. Especially an intellectual. Jude is an orphan > uprootedness, detachment from the class, studying university makes a completely new person – speaks different language. * Hardy was acquainted with the works of Tolstoy. It was rather under the influence of Ibsen, with whose plays he was more familiar. That drew his elaborate portrait of an emancipated woman is Sue. * The way in which English novelists approached matters of urgent interest, religious and sexual questions was conventional. He pleaded for frankness and sincerity. In Jude, he set an example of freedom of speech and honesty, challenged current literary prohibitions, raised questions of the divine governance and of the proper relations between the sexes. * In the preface, he describes Jude as a “tragedy of unfulfilled aims.” It is a protest against the exclusiveness of the class system and a virulent exposure of the anomalies of the marriage laws. * New elements: different kind of character-drawing and the elimination of almost everything except the characters and what they are doing and experiencing. * It is drama on a stage having the minimum of scenery. The action is exhibited in all its nakedness. * Jude is an uncommon character, Sue is exceptional. Even if she belongs to a type now becoming prevalent. Phillotson is the man that “no woman of any niceness can stomach” is abnormal. Jude and the sensual Arabella, the neurotic Sue and the unwholesome Phillotson. For a quadrilateral of opposing tensions, the geometry of this specification and of the reversion of both pairs is obvious. * His aunt tells him “The Fawleys were not made for wedlock.” He is a clean-minded fellow, who succumbs only to a compulsive attack upon his virtue, and after that never recovers equilibrium and respectability. Arabella has him on the sensual side. Sue on the intellectual and emotional. She is really much more of a rationalist than he, for Jude’s mind works slowly, far too slowly to keep up with the nimbleness and variability of Sue’s. The contrast between this pair is something, this woman of “tight-strained nerves”, this “epicure of emotions.” Sue is Hardy’s first unpredictable woman. She does unexpected things, which are seen on reflection to be true to her nature. She is consistent only in her “colossal inconsistency” * Hardy’s plots are based on coincidences. The characters are manipulated. Mr. Phillotson doesn’t recognize Jude = Hardy’s pessimism * Sue – very independent, unconventional. Works on her own, wants to be educated, reads philosophical, agnostic books (x Jude ardent relief believer), nervous, cruel to Jude, her behavior to Jude is inconsistent, is frigid, is Sue a flirt? * Hardy is iconoclastic to marriage, the contract of marriage forces you to love something. Then you won’t love him. Marriage is not natural for human beings. Marriage is a sorted contract x to Victorians sacred institution. * Communion of souls = one soul (Phillotson says about Jude and Sue), and speaks of 1. Shelly, it’s nothing about body x 1st meeting of Jude and Arabella, and about 2. Shopenhauer, at these times starts the discussion about marriage. It’s “Zeitgeist” (spirit of time), mental climate, Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata brings similar issues. * Sue turns over the conventional understanding of adultery. Power of music – the scene at the school they play a melody on the piano. It makes strong emotions. The music takes them to completely different emotional level. ''Under the Greenwood Tree , Far from the Maddling Crowd , The Return of the Native , Tess of the D’Urbervilles The 1890’s * chronologically still Victorianism, towards the end of the 19th cent. Queen Victoria was still very much alive. The era was coming to the end. All established forms of intellectual, moral and certainty were vanishing, and the new situation was giving rise to new attitudes regarding both love and art. * During Victorianism was believed that everything moral has to be a part of aesthetics. During the last decade of 19th century representatives believed that moralality and aesthetics are separate. In their reaction towards Victorianism the writers were partly inspired by the Pre-Raphaelists (poets and fine art, movement protested against mechanics of Victorian world and tried to renew the spirit and simplicity of Middle Ages. It led to aesthetic movement). They protested against the scientific and moral aspect of Victorian poetry and were in favor of return to poetry of pure images. * The strongest attitudes of the aesthetic movement of Walter Pater 1839-1874– esp. his mark Marius, the Epicurian , 1885, Studies in the History of the Renaissance , 1873, * Professor in Oxford, O. Wilde was his student, he influenced him, later influenced J. Joyce. * Did not believe in philosophy of an abstract system (of ideas), according to him life was fleeting and instead of pursuing abstractivities we shall constantly try to refove and purify his sensitivness. * “not the f…t of experience, but experience itself is all end.” * An obsession with the beauty of the ritual. That’s why some of the 1890s poets connect to human Roman Catholicism for the beauty of the Roman Catholic ritual. * Aestheticism – Aubrey Beardsley 1872-1898, illustrator, black and white drawings, very influential. Oscar Wilde , 1854-1900 * The symbol of the decade. * Born in Dublin and studied at Dublin and Oxford. * Pater’s Marius, the Epicurian had a huge influence over him. Focus on a moment. Life is very short. We have to be still alive, looking for the exquisite moment. Focus on aesthetic experience. * “art for art’s sake” (x early Victorians thought art has some duty to society) =Poems, 1881= * Fairy tales The Happy Prince and other Tales * other stories, criticism The Soul of Man Under Socialism , 1891, a long political essay * In 1882 he visited America on a lecture tour as a spokesman for the Aesthetic Movement * He was a dazzling conversationalists combining wordplay with outrageous opinions. * He was a dandy – he loved attention and wore colorful clothes in contrast to the sober black suits of the late Victorian middle classes (e.g. a green carnation in his buttonhole and velvet knee breeches). * His seventeen years of success ended in the spring of 1895 when he was arrested and sentenced to jail for two years of hard labour. He had been married for several years and was the father of two children when, in 1891, he began a homosexual relationship with a handsome young poet, Lord Alfred Douglas. Lord’s father accused Wilde of homosexuality. Wilde sued him, lost the case and was arrested for a serious criminal offense. The lawsuit and imprisonment led to his social and financial ruin. After leaving jail Wilde emigrated to France, where he lived the last three years of his life under an assumed name. He was divorced and bankrupt and had to rely on friends for financial support. * He is buried in Paris in the same cemetery as the poet, Charles Baudelaire, whose Fleurs du Mal had affected his attitudes toward life and literature. =The Picture of Dorian Gray , 1891= * His only novel. * Created a sensation when it was published in 1891. * Story of a handsome young man and his selfish pursuit of sensual pleasure, until the end of the book he remains fresh and healthy in appearance while his portrait mysteriously changes into a horrible image of his corrupted soul. * The novel contains a great preface with the conclusion: “All art is quite useless.” “Books are well written, or badly written That is all.” “No artist has ethical sympathies.” “The artist can express everything.” x Victorian understanding of art as moral. * It starts with conversation between Basil Halward and Lord Henry Wotton, they oppose the other’s views about the valued of art. Basil doesn’t want to exhibit his portrait because it reveals too much of his own soul. “Those who are faithful, know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.” * Lord Henry mock the ruling moral values of his day. Detests the qualities of duty of Victorians. He delights in thought of pleasures – “new Hedonism” * Dorian is jealous of the picture. He wishes the picture would grow old, not him. * Dorian falls in love with a young actress. Wants to marry her. Basil in unhappy for it. Henry reveals his theories about marriage. Dorian’s love for her is only for her acting. When he abandons her, she commits suicide. * The novel signals a warning against his hedonistic outlook. * Basil fears what may happen to Dorian if he falls into Henry’s influence. Henry says: “ There’s no such thing as good influence, all influence is immoral.” Henry wants to conduct on Dorian an experiment of immorality. Dorian puts to practice what Henry relishes in theory. Henry reminds Dorian that youth is only brief (Time is jealous of you. You will become sallow, hollow-cheaked, and dull-eyed.) Dorian wants to make the most of his youth. He retains his youth in look but his portrait becomes older and older. It changes so much that Dorian must hide it. * We never learn explicitly what crimes he committed but the picture suggests it - element of science fiction. He is haunted by anxiety that someone could see it. He blackmails, even murders Basil in the end. These horrific scenes make it a part of popular Gothic genre. * Concentrates on the manipulation and preservation of his beauty by two older men. * The tragic direction of the narrative indicates that intoxicating delights of this young man’s are extremely dangerous. The novel is critical to the immorality of which he was accused. We can agree with Lord Henry’s criticism of hypocrisy of Victorian morality, but the alternative he offers is much worse. Wilde himself insisted that the novel was not a didactic tract. * Brilliant epigrammatic style. * Lord Henry is living through Dorian who was a very easy target for him. Happy Prince & A House of Pomegranates - Collections of fairy tales. Written for his sons. De Profundis - a apology for his life. An essay written in prison. *He also wrote comedies. Characterised by adroitly contrived plots and remarkably witty dialogue. He had a natural talent for stagecraft and theatrical effects and a true gift for farce The Importance of Being Earnest , A Woman of No Importance Salome - a serious drama about obsessive passion, originally written in French. 'Lewis Carroll , '''1832 – 1898 Wrote two books for children. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Through the Looking-Glass 'Robert Louis Stevenson , '''1850 - 1894 *A Scottish novelist, essayist, and poet. He contributed several classic works to children’s literature. Treasure Island - it involves the boy her Jim Hawkins and the evil pirates Pew and Long John Silver The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - a horror story about the physician Dr. Jekyll. By means of a drug, he can create for himself a separate personality, absorbing all his evil. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *The beginning of the 20th century. *The father of the English detective story (Sherlock Holmes ). The House of the Baskervilles